First Came the Fires: Valles Caldera Landscape Futures in a Changing Climate

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Beyond Triage: Prioritizing Responses to Climate Change Impacts on Archaeological Resources" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Jemez Mountains in north-central New Mexico have experienced devastating wildfires due to the intersection of climate change and twentieth-century forest management practices. In the past decade 63% of the Valles Caldera National Preserve and 50% of recorded archaeological sites have been exposed to some type of unplanned fire event. Here, climate change impacts are not a question of if, or when, but what now and what next? This poster addresses how the proactive management of cultural resources is possible through the development of a geospatial model that assesses cultural resource vulnerability on the landscape-scale and prepares for potential risks both from wildfire and from landscape-scale restoration projects designed to decrease catastrophic wildfire. The assessment and modeling tool developed for Valles Caldera National Preserve is based on a three-tiered approach, including (1) quantifying vulnerability of known archaeological sites, (2) utilizing real-time data to model fire exposure, and (3) predicting the location of unrecorded cultural resources. We present the preserve’s preparation for prioritization with due consideration for the relative value of this archaeological record dominated by prehistoric lithic scatters within the context of myriad and monumental challenges facing archaeologists at global scales.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Beyond Triage: Prioritizing Responses to Climate Change Impacts on Archaeological Resources   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33513